I said earlier that I didn’t know how to react to recent news. I still don’t, even though that has yet to stop my reacting. On Facebook tonight I found that my friend Sam had written some things that struck me deeply. I don’t think that there is any one right way to react to horrors in our day, but I think his is a right way of doing so. One way of bearing the witness that needs to be borne. He writes:
“Black Lives Matter is a necessary slogan, albeit a tragic one, today as it has been for hundreds of years of scarring and reopening the original wounds of Black slavery. Yet today the armchair historians, and kangeroo judiciary, and online detectives reign smug with their hefty keyboards and guarded scabby hearts. You disgust me. But I will answer you and debate you and listen and play your games and dancing off the beat. Of course all lives always matter and of course there is a universal dimension to suffering and oppression and of course no class or race or people is saintly and good and of course all the other obvious stupid platitudes, only meant to end discussion and delay remorse and healing, are all at some basic, defensive level *true.* But your truths are lies. Your facts are deceitful. They are not meant to shed light but, instead, to shadow, obscure, and cast doubts. The gotchas and selective memories and clever comparisons cannot undo these graphic testimonies of violence nor their legacies that are generational and even national. I cannot speak for all nor can I hold within myself the proper proportion of equal sorrow; we cannot weep for all because we would lose the ability to weep. But all day today, since last night, I want to risk the embarrassment of sending all my love to you, my Black brothers and sisters.”
His post is public and you can read the rest here.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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